Supermodel Veronica Webb on Perfect Skin and Starting Over

Whether she was walking for Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent, breaking boundaries as the first black model to land a major beauty contract, appearing in seminal films like Jungle Fever, or publishing her own collection of autobiographical essays, Veronica Webb—whose career provided the template for today’s model multi-hyphenates—was an essential presence on the fashion scene of the 1990s.

Returning to the catwalk during the Fall 2016 season, Webb both joined Naomi Campbell and Alek Wek at Yeezy’s much-hyped presentation and treated Sophie Theallet’s audience to a rare runway appearance. Though she still enjoys the thrill of fashion month’s controlled chaos and is signed to Trump’s Legends Division, these days Webb is involved in a whole new side of the industry, launching a skin-care business with Rodan + Fields; kick-starting her official website, TheRealVeronicaWebb.com; and serving as beauty editor of luxury indie mag As If. Now a mother, entrepreneur, and editor, Webb reflects on more than 30 years of success—and why her 50s may be the most exciting time of her life.

What made you want to come back and do fashion shows again this season? Well, fashion is my first love and has been since I was a kid, because my mother made all my clothes when I was a child. To me, making clothes is so much fun and so intimate. It makes me happy, like baking cookies. My kids are bigger now, my youngest is now 11 1/2, so I’ve got some time as well. They still need me just as much, but in a different way. Sophie Theallet is such a great friend of mine, and we worked together in all kinds of capacities. She’s like family, and she asked me to do her show, and then Kanye asked me to do his show—the timing was right.

Fashion is always exciting. It’s extremely so because of the newness of it, because of the number of people who have to come together in order to make it happen, so there’s a lot of creativity. It’s like the circus, so it’s a fun world. At one point in my life I used to be part of this circus, traveling in the caravan with everyone. Now it’s really fun to sort of be the special guest star.

1990s nostalgia is back in a big way—why do you think that the ’90s remain so influential? The ’90s was an extremely strong period in terms of design, and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that new fabrics were invented. The competition to get into art schools was incredibly fierce, and also it was at that time when everyone still knew how to do everything by hand. The best of what machines were doing was coming in. So it was the beginning of being able to laser-cut patterns and do heat seams. A lot of clothes that had previously been completely out of reach for people started to become more available as a result of the new technology.

Then bridge fashion started to happen, and things like DKNY, which revolutionized the whole market and put designer clothes within the reach of a lot of people. So it was an exciting time, a period of real change. For models, everything was still shot on film then, and you had a group of models that was really highly trained, because you had to remember everything you were doing; every single shot was a performance. You had to retain everything you did that worked and repeat frame by frame, and the same was true for the photographers. There was the mystery of “What are we going to get?” The closest you got to seeing the final product was looking at a Polaroid.

Coming from working on film, how do you feel the switch to digital impacts your work? I mean, it really shorthands everything. It’s so quick. I took ballet, so it’s kind of like being in class and having that mirror in front of you. Steven Meisel always had a mirror there so you could see what you were doing. Having that monitor there is a bit like having that mirror. It feels very natural for me; I love technology because it’s so productive and because it stretches creativity for you in other directions. The one thing that it does take away is the mystery, as well as the idea. You don’t have that time to really ruminate and fantasize about what it is that you’re making and how it’s going to turn out. That is another state of creativity that I like a lot because it’s much more dreamlike. We would wait three months to see what an editorial was going to look like, and it would be a big surprise once you got the final product.

You’ve been working with Isaac Mizrahi since the start of your career; what is it like now to see him getting a retrospective? Isaac and I were actually in the halls at Parsons at the same time. Isaac was graduating when I was there in my senior year in the summer program. Isaac is like family. Teri Agins said it best; she calls him a bottomless pit of creativity. He never ceases to amaze me and he never ceases to inspire me; it’s like ideas ooze out of his pores and he’s a completionist—so when he gets an idea, he has to see it through to the end. It’s amazing to see someone who’s driven that way, in so many directions, whether it’s film, theater, singing, dancing, playing the piano, cooking, decorating, making furniture—if he dreams it up, it happens.

As beauty editor of As If and now an entrepreneur, cosmetics and skin care play a big part in your life; how did your fascination with beauty begin? My grandmother, who came from Louisville, Kentucky, was incredibly interested in beauty. She used to save all the hair out of her brush and make wigs from it. She wore high heels every day, to the point where her heels couldn’t touch the floor anymore. She had vinegar rinses for her hair, and she used to sleep with gloves on at night. She was a very manicured, perfect-looking lady. My mother was sort of the opposite end of the spectrum; she was incredibly simple when it came to beauty. No makeup, no nothing, all-natural products. My mother made everything, because she grew up on a farm with my grandmother—although, you could never tell that my grandmother had gone anywhere near a farm. My mother made soap, she made balms for her hands, she was just kind of self-sufficient and very well groomed.

I have always liked makeup; it went hand in hand with my love of clothes. Makeup was not something that I used a lot of, but I loved its transformative power. One thing that I learned early on was to find one good feature and play it up. It’s the easiest thing to do and it’s the easiest way not to make a mistake. I became famous in the ’90s for those big brows and just really perfect skin, really little foundation, and no color, no lipstick, no eyeshadow, nothing. That was my look for a long time.

How has your look evolved these days? Once you get to be over 25, your beauty needs start to change—especially in an industry like fashion, where your face is your stock-in-trade. I really started to get very serious about finding different treatments and finding different things that were specifically there to keep my skin looking great. It wasn’t until my late 20s when I embraced the combination of health and beauty. It’s very easy to do beauty only from the outside when you’re young, because you look perfect anyway—and you’re young. Around 26 or 27, that’s when I started to add in health very seriously. I’m not really a gym person, but I’ve made it a habit since then to learn to do something new athletically every year. This year it was figure skating, but in the past I’ve run marathons, done boxing—it’s about challenging yourself.

It’s my job to know what is available in terms of health and beauty treatments, and to try it out and figure out what works for me. I’ve used a lot of different things to deal with the changes from pregnancy and hormones and to deal with my melasma. I used a lot of things that were fast-acting, but in the end were harsh, and they didn’t give me the results that I really wanted, which was a slow, steady progression to a very natural-looking skin tone, which is how I came to Rodan + Fields. I think people need to educate themselves a bit about ingredients; they really need to think about what their primary needs are and understand their health.

What would you say defines this period of your life and career? One thing that I also learned from my mother is that you’re never too old to be something, to do something, or to try something. For me, starting this business with my sisters is amazing, because I have my own franchise and I have my own business. At 51, to strike out on starting another global business—I have to thank my mother for giving me the courage to do that.